“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with;it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts,what descriptions describe descriptions,what ties tie ties.It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

The final nuclear war of the Great Debacle era that devastated the planet was the most decisive of all, the one whose consequences were determinant for all earthly life. The Earth’s crust absorbed enormous amounts of radiation, until it began to overflow, making life unsustainable on its surface. All matter was radically and irreversibly transformed upon being coated in an unprecedented layer of toxicity, which led to the emergence of a new set of virtues, entirely unexpected. Before long, a great wave of change battered the planet, altering the forms of feeling, acting, thinking and moving. It began to spread in a synchronised fashion, from different geographical points, slowly cloaking everything in its path. Groups of humans and non-humans started to get together, to form communities, to focus all their energies on one shared need: to design new skins, to reinvent, with and through them, the forms of inhabiting the planet. Skin – both that of bodies, and that of the planet – became, from that point onwards, the field of experimentation for trying out new forms of experiencing (and surviving), and also the relationality between human bodies, non-human bodies and more-than-human bodies. This change in circumstances brought about two new outlooks on life. The first was the development of new ways of considering and perceiving the new virtues that this matter had presented, to be able to understand these virtues and talk to them in their language. The second meant an extreme sharpening of intelligence and haptic sensitivity, which sought to bolster, in this case, the virtues of skin: that is, previously unexplored ways of touching and being touched, of sensitivity and communication. Within a short period of time, the dramatic rise of a new kind of thinking and acting had occurred, namely by using one’s skin, understood as a permeable barrier and an indicator of both internal and external processes. This new philosophy started to join together forms of existence based on a continuous and infected exchange, as mediated by empathy and affective economies. In some way, many understood a century thereafter that it was at the epithelial and material level that the proclamation of the speculative thinker Donna Haraway had come to pass, in terms of inventing new arts and addressing how best to live and die on a damaged planet.

The communities assembled underground, in cabins built by drawing on the telluric intelligence of moles, of minerals, of soil. They set up the first laboratories there, protected from the radioactivity by strata of silex. Combining atoms of this mineral with oxygen, they started to synthesise skins based on their experiments with silicone. Silicone is a material of variable consistency, but of great viscosity, in which a multitude of affective and narrative particles cluster together. It is resistant to extreme temperatures, to severe weather conditions, to the ozone, to radiation, to humidity, and even fire to a large extent. Its composition of earth-sourced mineral elements and air particles affords silicone- enhanced skins unbeatable resistance, resilience and adaptability to the medium in question. Furthermore, its inner mechanisms are elastic, flexible and insulating, elegant and lustrous. It is not corrosive, but rather permeable and lubricating: it is permeable to other affecting forces, to other stories that live within it, to other factors that deform it. It is a porous skin, which works well in terms of adherence; others can adhere to it, it can adhere to others. This is probably due to its polymer molecular structure, which it shares with other matter that has a smooth, lubricating and sticky texture, such as starch, silk and cellulose. DNA is also a polymer: different materials, same structures. This is where silicone’s inclination towards prosthesis comes from, i.e. its adhesiveness to bodies, its adaptation to other media, but also its proximity to surgical language, its grammar of implants, of bandaging, of medical application and its biocompatibility with other materials. In order to take delve further into the lógica of repair, the post-Debacle communities decided to take a closer look at this structural resonance, testing forms of molecular symbiosis by grafting other types of skin. This way, iridescent skins and exoskeletons were created based on stem cells extracted from insect carcasses and the shed skins of reptiles. Co-evolutionary intersections were made between unique skin types, such as the plasmodium cells of slime mold, which dissolve their individual membranes in order to be fused within a collective entity, as and when demanded by the context. Certain batches of skin were grafted with chromatophores, i.e. cells with light-reflecting pigments, present in the bodies of octopuses and squids. They thus turned into dermal surfaces that would change according to the variation in light, making their bodies become canvases of iridescent light. In all cases, the histories of the originating bodies left traces in the new skins, which were implanted both onto bodies and onto the earth’s crust – no distinction was made between bodies. Those which inherited chromatophores from squids also inherited their life experiences and teuthidic mythologies, their bioluminescent abilities and the history of their struggles against intensive overfishing. This elastic memory was stored in live, eloquent and dense archives, and the communities showed how to pass them on and respect them.

Now that you’ve reached this point, take your time. You can touch each skin with your eyes, or you can move your body between their bodies, brushing against the hanging extremities. You can follow the choreography as suggested by the copper and brass bars from which the skins are hanging, follow the static movement that they mark out, whilst they are quietly waiting. Pay attention to the relationality that is established between your body, the hanging bodies, the bodies on the floor, and the forces that move among them: the tension with which it is held, the seriousness with which it is structured, the gravity with which it hangs, the parsimony of those who wait. Pay attention, furthermore, to the general rhythm of the space, that which is formed between the pieces, that which is found in those spaces between and next to; listen to the repetitions, the quavers, and the silences they compose. Listen to the density of the time contained within this room: the present has a certain thickness, in which material legacies and affective loads are accumulated. It would appear that the skins’ substance is frozen in a constant crystallisation process, almost infinite, during which time their consistency becomes defined, slowly; it is difficult to determine whether they are in a liquid, wet state, or whether they are already dry and firm. The environment is loaded with tense calmness, which oscillates among stretched light and smooth shadows at different times of the day – though we have not known, for a long time, what is the exact meaning of day, or night. Despite everything, one does not perceive a calm atmosphere here. If you pay close attention, you can notice a kind of underground circulation, practically imperceptible; a kind of subtle, subcutaneous crawling sensation, produced by the breathing of the pieces and the room.

Finally, pay particular attention to the textures of these skins and bodies. You can stroke their stretchmarked coarseness, lick their shiny sumptuousness, embrace their voluptuous folds. These textures allow for a brief reading of excessive scraping, a repeated slobbering, an abrupt and unusual skin graft, the traces of wispy fluff, or of others who have previously touched them. They do not delete the intentions, forces, gestures and accidents of which they were borne, but quite the opposite: the fingerprints and memories are tattooed therein, inaugurating thus a new aesthetic of reparation and tactile reading.

The skins’ antennae set about filtering the currents, reading the surroundings like tentacles, reading your presence here. Your body is gradually modified too, in this relational exchange with them. The virtues of these new skins, bodies, bandages and structures are founded on exactly this: on awakening the capacity to fabulate and tell stories, to cause a speculative storm that transforms your sensorial ability.